“Do you like my gift, Sanych?” Rhona asked, her voice honeyed. “A medallion fit for a prince of any realm. It once belonged to the son of the last emperor of Kazhbor.”
“It’s…it’s lovely,” Sanych replied, trying not to stare. “I hope it doesn’t chafe, Geret.”
Geret pressed his lips together and glanced at Rhona.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” the pirate said. “I’ve kindly asked Geret to be silent for the time being, and to perform some few tasks for the expedition. Sound familiar?” To Geret, she said, “You and I both know I’m a far gentler mistress than you were a master, don’t we?”
Geret turned to her and grinned crookedly, and she laughed. Sanych stood rooted by disbelief as he walked over to Rhona. As he pulled the door shut, however, he turned back and gave Sanych a look so filled with sorrow and apology that she gasped.
He’s faking! Oh, Wisdom save me, he’s faking! She collapsed into a chair and leaned back, staring at the ceiling in overwhelming relief. He’s not gone mad; he’s not abandoning the quest and running off to be a pirate. Best of all, she murmured in the silence of her heart, he doesn’t love Rhona. She took several breaths’ time to calm down before the next obvious question rose in her mind: So…what does he think he’s doing?
~~~
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rhona howled over the gale. Night had fallen, and the wind had kicked up.
Ruel leaned into the wheel to keep on course. “You’re letting me talk now?” he shouted.
“Aye! Now tell me what in the name of Nethermaw’s bilious bowels you were thinking, talking to Sanych like that!” She gripped the wheel against a particularly strong gust, helping him hold the caravel steady.
“She deserves to know,” Ruel said, setting his jaw.
“Who does and does not deserve to know things is not up to you, First Mate Menihuna.” Rhona’s eyes flashed in the blue light of a madly swinging lantern.
The reminder that he wasn’t captain should have stilled his argument immediately. It didn’t. “You can’t keep playing it both ways, Rhona!” he called over the howling wind.
“What are you—” A line whipped loose down on the main deck, and the crew on deck quickly dashed from their protected locations to resecure it. Once she saw that the issue was under control, she continued. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about! You claimed a dirtwalker, yet you expect him to walk the ropes you string for him! It’s not going to work!”
Rhona’s fears bubbled dizzyingly to the fore. That her cousin disapproved of her claim choice didn’t surprise her—he’d always adhered to Clan rule more readily than she, as most men did—but if he was talking back to her over this issue, what other rebellious thoughts might he be fomenting? Surely he wouldn’t use this to start a revolt aboard her precious ship…would he?
“What’s your plan?” she asked, forcing the words out of her throat. The wind slammed her braids across her face, making her wince as one caught her across the eye. She jammed it behind her ear.
“My plan? What’s my plan? What in the deeps is your plan?” Ruel shouted back. “You shouldn’t have claimed him in the first place! He’s a dirtwalker! If you’re that desperate, you should spurn him and claim another! Any man on your crew would be eager for the bump in status.”
“I’m not going to do that,” she shot back. “He’s done everything I’ve asked of him today.” She paused, and her features softened. “I think he wants to be with me as much as I want to be with him.”
Ruel shook his head. “You can’t teach a pig to dive for oysters, Rhona.”
“Of course I can. I’m very persuasive. It’s just going to take some time.”
A gust of wind nearly tore the wheel from his grasp, and he quickly wrestled it back to the proper heading. “I’ve seen how you look at him. Don’t let him tempt you away from us. You’re next in line for Prime. If you choose dirty boots over blood, Agonbloom will fall.”
“I’d never turn from my blood! Is there anyone more Clan than I am?” Her eyes pleaded with his. “I’m not turning my back on the Clan. I’m trying to make it stronger. Once I’ve brought Geret over to our side, he’ll bring his knowledge of the landbound to Agonbloom, and we can use it to make ourselves even more powerful. Then, everyone will see my choice as a brilliant tactical decision.”
“Instead of a desperate move by a lovesick fool?” Ruel asked, though his tone was teasing. “All right, shiny. I won’t say any more against it. But you only have a few weeks to get your heir squared away. After that, if Geret’s still not sailing on your heading, you can scuttle the claim and still come out ahead with Agonbloom. But you watch him closely. No more full-moon eyes whenever he walks past.”
Rhona stood while the wind whipped her hands with flaps of lace from her sleeves. Ruel had always been by her side, and on her side. She owed him for his loyalty, when he could easily have gotten her set adrift in a dinghy.
“Thank you,” she said, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her.
“You’re family, Rhona. My father might have seduced my mother off the sea forever, but your mother raised me alongside you. I’ve never forgotten that. I’m your right arm, and I always will be.”
Their eyes met for a long moment, then she nodded and slipped away, leaving him to the night, the wind, and the remainder of his third shift at the wheel.
Chapter Eleven
Three hundred and eighty-seven years ago
“We’ll be back before you know it.” Bjeski had spoken those words to Mindri two weeks ago, leaving the young woman satisfied that Bjeski would take good care of her brother and her promised as they set out to retrieve the lost scepter of the last Storm King.
But as Bjeski’s shaggy alpine horse trudged through the snow, leading the group still further into the remote, unnamed mountain range on the border between Nen Thakka and the frozen tundra of the Ianiu, the adventurers behind her started bickering once again. She ground her molars in frustration.
“You don’t touch my food anymore, Monnja,” Hella warned, glaring through the long fur that rimmed her hood.
“Why, are you afraid I’ll poison your porridge?” the darker-haired woman responded.
“I wouldn’t put it past you. I’ve seen you and Pon glaring at me. If I don’t make it home from this expedition, though, Jann and Bervik will tell the truth of what happened.”
Jann shifted in his saddle and looked back. “Don’t drag me into this, Hella. We don’t need any more dramatics on this trip.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” Monnja teased, leading Pon to hoot in amusement.
“Stop it, Monnja. I’m promised to Mindri, the Maid of Skissen, and you know it. Why are you even here with us? You’ve got nothing to gain by coming on this journey.”
“You know that’s not true! Just because you think bards’ tales are a waste of time doesn’t mean everyone does. This adventure will be the basis for my bardic mastery song. It’s going to make me famous in all the Trine Lands.”
Bervik barked a laugh. “‘Trine Lands’. Now there’s an outdated term. Maybe if you talked like normal people—”
“I wouldn’t be a bard, then, would I?”
“You’re not a bard now, Monnja,” Jann insisted.
A disgruntled quiet reigned. The only sounds were of horses breathing and snow crunching. Overhead, the wide sliver of blue sky dropped brilliant spring sunshine down onto the steep slopes that surrounded the valley in which they traveled. Wisps of cloud streamed from the mountain peak directly ahead: their destination was finally in sight.
“So, this scepter,” Pon said, as if hesitant to break the peaceful silence. “Does it do anything?”
“I bet it makes a lovely mace,” Monnja said, glaring at Jann.
“You know what I mean,” Pon insisted.
“No one knows what it does, Pon,” Jann said. “It’s been lost for seven decades in some ice cave up on that mountain. Most
of the summers since then, the lords of the north have warred for supremacy. That’s why my liege lord wants it; to restore peace.” He looked at Bervik with approval. “His son shows courage and determination by accompanying me on its retrieval quest.”
“Isn’t it Bjeski who’s leading this quest, Jann?” Hella pointed out. “She is in front.”
Jann glared at her, then forward to where Bjeski rode alone. “It’s my quest, personally tasked to me by Lord Skissen, among all his Outstriders. I’m not even sure why he let her come.”
Bjeski bared her teeth into the chill wind and reined in her horse, feeling her temper escape her control. Allgods damn them each and all! They have no grasp of anything beyond their own noses!
She turned her horse until it blocked their way, forcing them to stop. “Lord Skissen ‘let me come’ because I can get the scepter of the Storm King alone if I have to. I’m also here to keep you all from dying, so you can return home and get hailed as heroes. Which none of you deserve, considering the way you’re acting.”
Monnja made a loud, derisive snort. “And you are who, again? Oh, that’s right. No one knows who in the three pits of doom you are! You just appeared a couple of months ago and got all cozy with Bervik’s father, and suddenly you’re his artifact retrieval expert? How many times did you have to warm his furs to make that happen?”
Bjeski’s horse lunged past Monnja’s, and the apprentice bard took a hard elbow to the chest, knocking her from her saddle. She sat up in the snow to find Bjeski’s blade humming below her chin.
“The instability in northern Nen Thakka is causing the rulers in Jenka Nala to have issues,” Bjeski said in a chill voice, “and I have a vested interest in seeing those issues go away. If I find this scepter, the north calms down, and my problem is solved.”
Her gaze shifted to the others. Hella sat wide-eyed on her mount. Jann and Bervik had their hands on their swords. Pon’s gaze was locked onto Monnja.
“My husband gave his life for a cause greater than himself,” she continued. “I traveled here because I honor his sacrifice and share his vision. I don’t need to warm anyone’s furs to accomplish my goals. Unlike you, Hella, sneaking into Bervik’s furs in the thin hope of a love match, or at least a small home and stipend to raise his illegitimate child.”
Jann looked at the lord’s son with a raised eyebrow.
“Jann’s here for a show of manliness, to keep the younger Outstriders in line back at the castle,” she continued, peeling off a thick mitten. “Now that I’m out here with Lord Skissen’s blessing, he’s afraid I’ll outlast him and he’ll lose respect. Well, that’s a given at this point.”
She stabbed herself in the hand with a hiss of pain, letting red blood drip across her pale palm and down onto the snow beside Monnja. Moments later, the wound healed over. She wiped the excess off with more snow, ignoring the shocked stares of her companions as she pulled on her mitten.
“Monnja needs a serious lesson in the social aspect of a bard’s life; if you insult everyone around you, you’ll not only alienate your audience, but you’ll never hear those excellent, secret stories people hold close to their hearts.” She turned to Pon. “And you: don’t think I don’t know you’re a spy. Skissen’s strongest rival, Lord Hask, sent you to steal the scepter from us, killing us all if necessary.”
The others, previously disgruntled, now gasped in surprise and looked at the amiable Pon, whose face had stretched into a rictus of desperation. Their voices raised in anger and accusation, focusing their discontent on him.
“You don’t understand,” he protested, eyes wide. “This is my last chance; my debts to Lord Skissen are too heavy! If I fail, my family will—”
“All of you shut your teeth!” Bjeski shouted, her voice echoing in the narrow valley. “Myopic fools, each. Bicker this much on the mountain and you’ll lose focus and get someone killed. No, I’ll get the scepter from the ice cave by myself. I can’t take any more of your half-baked companionship. You all wait here.”
“Even me?” gulped Pon, eyeing Jann’s and Bervik’s swords.
Bjeski’s lip curled. The traitor had a point; she didn’t want him dead at the hands of the others. “No. Pon, you’re with me. The rest of you, camp here and wait. Don’t let me find you sneaking up the mountain yourselves. I’ve no problem stabbing any of you.”
The group watched in stunned, angry silence as she and Pon rode away.
Hours later, the pair began to ascend the mountain’s flank. Bjeski told Pon to hole up in a natural cave she spotted. “I’ll be back with the scepter much faster without you to slow me down,” she said, leaving him standing before the cave mouth.
Two mornings later, Bjeski returned to the cave and woke Pon from a huddled sleep amongst his furs. He looked up, eyes bleared with sleep, to see her waggling a pewter-hued scepter studded at one end with yellow diamonds the size of lynx eyes.
“Let’s go.”
Pon was full of questions as they descended the mountain. Bjeski’s answers were short and bored. “Yes, I saw the body of the Storm King. No, I didn’t break off a souvenir. No, I think he suffocated. Yes, it took a long time to find it. No, I didn’t have to chisel the scepter out of the ice. Actually, I didn’t sleep at all. No, I’m not tired. No, you can’t carry the scepter.”
As they rounded a bend in the valley at the foot of the scepter’s mountain, she jerked her horse to a snorting stop, staring in horror.
A tumbled wedge of snowy clumps spread across the valley, from the near mountainside to just shy of the far slope. Uprooted trees and broken branches poked out here and there. A fresh white scar marred the mountainside overhead, and a wide swath of trees had been erased from the thin forest near the valley floor. The avalanche had buried hundreds of paces of the snowy trail in cold death.
Bjeski looked across the valley, desperate for some smudge of color that would indicate the group had camped somewhere other than right where she’d told them to. But the valley remained monochromatic in all directions.
She felt her breathing quicken. No, no, no…
They searched for hours. They dug for days. In the end, Bjeski and Pon recovered all four bodies and hauled them home on makeshift sleds.
To his credit, Lord Skissen ignored the Storm King’s scepter, dropping to his knees in the muddy snow inside his castle yard, beside his oldest child’s body. Bjeski and Pon stood silently, letting him grieve.
Then Mindri arrived, rushing through an open archway. She stopped short on the stone steps, taking in the four bodies, her father’s bowed head. A shriek of denial ripped from her mouth. She threw herself onto Jann’s body, clutching at his frozen limbs. Pon shifted his feet, uncomfortable in the face of her wild grief. Bjeski merely waited.
The Maid of Skissen dried her tears, rose to her feet, and slapped Bjeski hard enough to drive her to her knees. “You told me they would be safe with you!” she raged. “That you’d be back before I knew it! You lied to me! They’re dead; they’re all dead! Why didn’t you die, too? Why didn’t you die!?”
She wrapped her fingers around Bjeski’s throat and squeezed, driving her onto her back in the snow. Darkness edged Bjeski’s vision.
Arisson…here I come again…
Blackness.
When she could see again, Mindri stood a few paces away, between a pair of wide-eyed guards, and Lord Skissen was standing over Bjeski herself, a bitter smile on his face.
“It’s true, then. You really can’t die.”
She got to her feet. “No, I die on a regular basis. I just have the dark luck to come back every time.”
“Foul creature!” Mindri hissed, stepping toward her. “Spawn of evil!”
Lord Skissen glowered at Bjeski. “Did you kill these people? Did you murder my son?”
“My lord—” Pon began.
Bjeski cut him off with a curt wave. “Yes. They died because of my actions.”
“No, they didn’t!” Pon protested.
“They did,” she insisted. “I
abandoned them because they irritated me. If I’d been there, I might have saved them all.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Here’s your scepter.” She scooped the bejeweled rod from a loop in her horse’s saddle, slapped it into his waiting hands, and strode out of the yard.
The chill spring wind sent gusts of icy particles dancing before her, leading her down the icy road.
~~~
Two days later, Pon found her at a caravanserai, waiting to depart as a hired guard with the next caravan. In the dimness of the pale stone enclosure, the air was thick with the smell of horses, oxen and sawdust. A low cacophony of voices, leather, metal and animal sounds made a constant backdrop.
“I’ll come with you,” he offered.
She looked up from the sword she was checking for nicks. “What about your family?”
“My debts were forgiven because I helped you bring the bodies home. My mother, my sister and her children are safe now. But I thought…well…it didn’t seem right that you just wandered off alone. I thought we could travel together for a while.”
Bjeski shook her head. “Not safe. Look what happened.”
“You can’t take credit for an avalanche. It’s the season for them.”
“No, before that. I felt superior. I left them behind. And they died. I was unforgivably impatient. If I’d just decided to wait another ten or twenty years before calling them on their mistakes and poor judgment, they’d likely have figured it out already.” She sighed. “I’m already forgetting what it’s like to be young.”
He looked at her strangely for a moment, then said, “All the more reason to have a traveling companion, then.”
That garnered a small but genuine smile. Offering her weapon’s handle to him, she asked, “How are you with a sword?”
Pon traveled with Bjeski for over twenty years. She never left him behind.
Chapter Twelve
Oathen Page 10
